Google Joins the Search For the Loch Ness Monster

The tale of the Loch Ness monster has always been, in a funny way, a story about technology. More specifically, it is a story about how machines can bump up against the edge of a mystery, and provoke a sense of wonder that eyewitness testimony cannot.

There’s the famous photograph, of course. Grainy, black-and-white, with the silhouette of a creature sloping into the rippled water. When it emerged in 1934, the Surgeon’s Photograph, as it’s known, caused a sensation. It was later revealed to be a hoax in what has become a long tradition of elaborate, made-up images of the monster.

There would be other photos. There was also a film, which showed a beast with a humped back and a long black tail splashing wildly as the creature apparently propelled itself with fins. Last year, there was debate over whether an image from Apple Maps featured the elusive monster.

And now there is Google Street View footage—or, loch view, in this case—which doesn’t promise a sighting of Nessie, but does provide plenty of imagery for amateur monster-hunters to scour. In honor of the 81st anniversary of the Surgeon’s Photograph, Google mounted its imaging equipment on a boat—plus took underwater photographs—and stitched together a portrait of Loch Ness by taking photos every 2.5 seconds.

Source: The Atlantic